What's more is, you can learn to program and even develop proffessional quality games on your own for very little money. There are free compilers, many professional APIs are free to use, and there's plenty of documentation on the web. It's all about how much time you want to spend.

Time is money. You can probably programm a year on a game with free tools and free docs and free tutorials. But who will pay your rent and food and medicare for 365 days ? Time is no resource that comes free of charge.

hth
-nv

She was so Blonde, she spent 20 minutes looking at the orange juice can because it said "Concentrate."

Originally posted by nvoigt Time is money. You can probably programm a year on a game with free tools and free docs and free tutorials. But who will pay your rent and food and medicare for 365 days ? Time is no resource that comes free of charge.

I was implying that it doesn't cost any $$$ directly unlike many other things which often take both time AND money. You can program in your spare time, or during high school while you leech off of your parents money, etc.

Software programming. Game programming sounds fun, but ive found it to be frustating as hell! The satifaction you get from completeting a program which has a pupose and fufils its purpose properly is amazing.

Plus with game programming you can't really learn much. But when you are working with expensive hardware, creating software that can interact with different computers over the net, sort through users. Plus with back doors. These are the programs that'll teach you the most about programming, not just focusing on a few different pieces of hardware.

Career in game programming

I think I have the "drive" to continue with my personal learning of computers and software, but really, is anyone going to employ someone without a piece of paper, no matter how good they SAY they are?

I would program games, but all people seem to want anymore is graphics and I never was one to be impressed with graphics so they end up being a last ditch effort to have something on the screen after everything else is done. That is why I usually stick to utilities of various forms. I also can't seem to figure out how to do direct input from the keyboard for the life of me, which severely limits the usefulness of controls in a game.

Planned to work somewhere where my Assembly knowledge would be appreciated, unfortunately didn't find such job.

Now I'm working on a medical software, quite exciting.

Games? It'd be fun, but it's hard to create something new. Those who have great ideas do not have enough financial resources, big company's usually kill one's personality -password: teamwork.

Besides, newbies will start with "else if" and "switch... case", correct silly errors, later on can get eventually higher in the hierarchy and do some design work, and, after many years, become a creative director

Of course, things might evolve other way, but usually this is how it works

Game Programming.
But I'm not sure if it's fun or not, because I think it's more difficult that software programming...
But now, I just hope to graduate( I have five semesters, including this one to go)... Then I just hope to have a career in programming, and I won't care if it's in games or software, but if was able to choose I would go for Game Programming.

Software. I've been programming software and I like it. When I can get a fully functional program to do something useful that people can benefit from, it's the best feeling in the world. I don't think I'd get that same satisfaction from game programming, although I think it'd be fun to try for a little.

To be fair both are very similar. You need a very analytical mind and the drive to fix something and the ability to keep cool when you're programs aren't working. This seems to be true for programming and applications programming.

Games? It'd be fun, but it's hard to create something new. Those who have great ideas do not have enough financial resources, big company's usually kill one's personality -password: teamwork.

I don't think having 'good ideas' for games counts for as much as people think it does. A lot of the things that have made games great and/or made people famous was actually being able to implement previously known ideas. For example BSP was not first introduced by John Carmack, it was actually conceived around 1980 by 3 people named Fuchs, Kedem, and Naylor in two papers called "Predeterming Visibility Priority in 3-D Scenes" and "On Visible Surface Generation by A Priori Tree Structures". Likewise the idea of using volumes to generate shadows was first conceived in 1977 by Frank Crow and first implemented on IrixGL, but John Carmack has went ahead with his engineering capability and is the first to offer these things that can run in real time. Bump mapping is another example of this (I think the bump mapping has more of an effect than the shadow volumes do, the extra detail is extremely impressive).

applications/software programming for me. I seem to see a lot of new programmers who just got into it for game programming. Then they find out it's hard and math-intensive and decide to say "Screw it.".

I've always thought applications programming was cooler and more useful. There was a time when I got into game/graphics programming, but now it's more of a "meh, who cares?" to me. I've always been impressed by those who can do it, but I'm just not math-minded enough to get into it, I guess. I dunno.

I'm really really glad that there are a lot of people who want to do applications programming, because I was afraid people ONLY wanted to do game programming (like I said it's difficult enough to weed out those who arent' motivated enough for it). Honestly though, I don't really like competition in the sense that I'm happiest when I can solely concentrate on reading and programming, it's blissful really. You guys know what I mean? I think a lot of people on these boards are extremely bright but maybe the idea of elitism is unsettling (it is for me anyways).
EDIT:

I've always been impressed by those who can do it, but I'm just not math-minded enough to get into it, I guess. I dunno.

Yeah right Ken, I'd be willing to bet you could do any amount of math (IF you really wanted to use it for something). I find a lot of people are intimidated by math, I am, but I also find that if you just take a breath and kinda lay back and try to really figure out 'what's really going on' you can do it (im not saying it's easy).

I hate math, and i'm not great at it; but i'm graduating with a computer science degree in may anyway.

Even if you don't like math, but you're smart and hard working you can get through the math classes ( even the crappy ones like Calc 3 and higher ).

and the other thing is is that some higher math is very different then the math you might be used to. Like right now i'm taking a course in Theory of Computation ( it has to do with determining was is mathematically possible and whats not, as well as complexity and automata theory ) and it doesn't resemble anything you would be learning in highschool.

So my point is, don't decide against going into CS just because you don't really enjoy math.